Rose Pastor Stokes: I see no hope of functioning 100 percent in the interest of the common people except through the Socialist Party, and hereby apply for readmission to membership. I left the party because I considered dangerous the party’s attitude toward America’s participation in the war; but the crisis created by the St. Louis resolution is past, and the present immediate danger is an imperialistic peace which, I believe, only a unified and strengthened international Socialist movement can prevent. I thrill to think how rapidly the world would move forward if, for instance, the German Social Democracy were to unite — if the party of the right were to unite with the party of the left — and sweep the Hohenzollerns out of power, or if the several parties of the Social Revolution in Russia were to sink their differences and go to the heart of their common purpose; or if in Italy, France, and England there were but one unified expression of the Socialist movement; and because my heart cries out to them, “Comrades, unite!” I am brought to a keen realization of my own remissness. If I see and deplore the results of disruption and desire unity for my Comrades abroad, I must surely strive for unity here, where 90 percent of the American people, whose hearts beat warm as any in the world for humanity, need to stand as unitedly against their own and the world’s anti-humanitarian 10 percent, as the 90 percent of any other country. President Wilson’s last message; the British and French government’s failure to meet fully and in a spirit of frankness the democratic implications of it; the imprisonment in Germany of 300 of her left wing Socialists; the counterrevolutionary attempts in Russia, where an unseen hand not Russia’s seems to be playing fast and loose — these four significant events are among the foremost impelling me to rejoin the Socialist Party. I beg, dear Comrades, that you admit me again to your ranks. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3396
R. Palme Dutt: Demagogy, … , is the art of playing on the hopes and the fears, the emotions and the ignorance of the poor and the suffering for the benefit of the rich and the powerful. It is the meanest of the arts. This is the art of Fascism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3398
Erasmus of Rotterdam: I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3402
Erasmus of Rotterdam: I have no patience with those who say that sexual excitement is shameful and that venereal stimuli have their origin not in nature, but in sin. Nothing is so far from the truth. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3405
Erasmus of Rotterdam: If there is truth in the popular legend, that Antichrist will be born from a monk and a nun (which is the story these people keep putting about), how many thousands of Antichrists the world must have already! https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3406
Jose Mujica: I’m an enemy of consumerism. Because of this hyperconsumerism, we’re forgetting about fundamental things and wasting human strength on frivolities that have little to do with human happiness. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3410
Thomas Paine: The sublime and ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step below the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3414
Lucius Annaeus Seneca: You must go to the scene of action, first, because men put more faith in their eyes than in their ears, and second, because the way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful, if one follows patterns. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3417
Amilcar Cabral: We base our struggle on the concrete realities of our country. We appreciate the experiences and achievements of other peoples and we study them. But revolution or national liberation is like a dress which must fit to each individual’s body. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3418
Khalida Jarrar: It is the nature of a colonizer’s role, whether the warden is male or female, to see themselves as superior, oppressive, and arrogant, and to believe that they can crush the dignity of prisoners. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3419
Karl Marx: The oligarchy does not perpetuate itself by retaining power permanently in the same hand, but by dropping it with one hand in order to catch it again with the other, and so on. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3421
Mao Zedong: We Communists must be able to integrate ourselves with the masses in all things. If our Party members spend their whole lives sitting indoors and never go out to face the world and brave the storm, what good will they be to the Chinese people? None at all, and we do not need such people as Party members. We Communists ought to face the world and brave the storm the great world of mass struggle and the mighty storm of mass struggle. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3422
Gilles Dauvé: Fascism was an effort of the bourgeoisie to forcibly tame its own contradictions, to turn working class methods of mobilisation to its own advantage, and to deploy all the resources of the modern state, first against an internal enemy, then against an external one. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3423
Gilles Dauvé: An essential aspect of fascism is its birth in the streets, its use of disorder to impose order, its mobilisation of the old middle classes crazed by their own decline, and its regeneration, from without, of a state unable to deal with the crisis of capitalism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3424
Lenin: The forms of domination may vary: capital manifests its power in one way where one form exists, and in another way where another form exists - but essentially the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are voting qualifications or some other rights or not - in fact, the more democratic it is the cruder and more cynical is the rule of capitalism. One of the most democratic republics in the world is the United States of America, yet nowhere is the power of capital, the power of a handful of multimillionaires over the whole of society, so crude and so openly corrupt as in America. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3426
Eugene V. Debs: In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3428
Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Red Army and the Russian people have surely started the Hitler forces on the road to ultimate defeat and have earned the lasting admiration of the people of the United States. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3429
Franklin D. Roosevelt: On behalf of the people of the United States, I want to express to the Red Army, on its twenty-fifth anniversary, our profound admiration for its magnificent achievements, unsurpassed in all history. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3430
Franklin D. Roosevelt: For many months, in spite of tremendous losses in men, supplies, transportation, and territory, the Red Army denied victory to a most powerful enemy. It checked him at Leningrad, at Moscow, at Voronezh, in the Caucasus, and finally, at the immortal battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army not only defeated the enemy but launched the great offensive which is still moving forward along the whole front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The enforced retreat of the enemy is costing him heavily in men, supplies, territory, and especially in morale. Such achievements can only be accomplished by an Army that has skillful leadership, sound organization, adequate training, and above all, the determination to defeat the enemy, no matter what the cost in self-sacrifice. At the same time, I also wish to pay tribute to the Russian people from whom the Red Army springs, and upon whom it is dependent for its men, women, and supplies. They, too, are giving their full efforts to the war and are making the supreme sacrifice. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3431
